Sature 

 ature's 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



484 



set before them; and he would send them 

 back with renewed interest from his class- 

 room to study the caterpillars in the garden, 

 or the development of the silkworm's eggs, 

 which formerly had been kept as mere play- 

 things. A lecture on " Shells and their In- 

 mates " would in like manner be readily 

 illustrated; and with the aid of a few mi- 

 croscopes and some stagnant water the won- 

 der and interest of the pupils might be 

 excited over the description of lesser worlds 

 than ours. ANDREW WILSON Biology in 

 Education, p. 17. (Hum., 1888.) 



2377. NATURE SURPASSES HUMAN 

 ESTIMATE A Hundred Feet of Iron Rods to 

 Sound a Glacier. When I first began my 

 investigations upon the glaciers, now more 

 than twenty-five years ago, scarcely any 

 measurements of their size or their motion 

 had been made. One of my principal ob- 

 jects, therefore, was to ascertain the thick- 

 ness of the mass of ice, generally supposed 

 to be from eighty to a hundred feet, and 

 even less. The first year I took with me 

 a hundred feet of iron rods (no easy mat- 

 ter, where it had to be transported to the 

 upper part of a glacier on men's backs ) , 

 thinking to bore the glacier through and 

 through. As well might I have tried to 

 sound the ocean with a ten-fathom line. 

 The following year I took two hundred 

 feet of rods with me, and again I was foiled. 

 Eventually I succeeded in carrying up a 

 thousand feet of line, and satisfied myself, 

 after many attempts, that this was about 

 the average thickness of the glacier of the 

 Aar, on which I was working. AGASSIZ Geo- 

 logical Sketches, ser. i, ch. 8, p. 294. (H. 

 M. & Co., 1896.) 



2378. NATURE SURPASSES MAN 



Natural Surpasses Human Selection. As 

 man can produce and certainly has produced 

 a great result by his methodical and un- 

 conscious means of selection, what may not 

 natural selection effect? Man can act only 

 on external and visible characters; Nature, 

 if I may be allowed to personify the natural 

 preservation or survival of the fittest, cares 

 nothing for appearances, except in so far as 

 they are useful to any being. She can act on 

 every internal organ, on every shade of con- 

 stitutional difference, on the whole machin- 

 ery of life. Man selects only for his own 

 good; Nature only for that of the being which 

 she tends. . . . Under Nature the slight- 

 est differences of structure or consititution 

 may well turn the nicely balanced scale in 

 the struggle for life, and so be preserved. 

 How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of 

 man ! How short his time, and consequently 

 how poor will be his results, compared with 

 those accumulated by Nature during whole 

 geological periods! Can we wonder, then, 

 that Nature's productions should be far 

 " truer " in character than man's produc- 

 tions; that they should be infinitely better 

 adapted to the most complex conditions of 



life, and should plainly bear the stamp of 

 far higher workmanship? DARWIN Origin 

 of Species, ch. 4, p. 76. (Burt.) 



2379. NATURE'S BOATS HAVE 

 WATER-TIGHT COMPARTMENTS Seeds 

 That Bide Their Time. In the driftwood 

 may be found dry fruits of the bladdernut, 

 brown and light, an inch and a half in diam- 

 eter. See how tough they are; they seem 

 to be perfectly tight, and, even if one hap- 

 pens to have a hole punched in its side, there 

 are probably two cells that are still tight, 

 for there are three in all. Within are a few 

 seeds, hard and smooth. Why are they so 

 hard? W T ill it not be difficult for such seeds 

 to get moist enough and soft enough to en- 

 able them to germinate? The hard coats 

 enable the seeds to remain uninjured for a 

 long time in the water, in case one or two 

 cells of the papery pods are broken open; 

 and after the tough pod has decayed and the 

 seeds have sunken to the moist earth among 

 the sticks and dead leaves, they can have all 

 the time they need for the slow decay of 

 their armor. Sooner or later a tiny plant is 

 likely to appear and produce a beautiful 

 bush. . . . But this is not all. Many 

 of the dry nuts hang on all winter, or for a 

 part of it, rattling in the wind, as tho loath 

 to leave. Some of them are torn loose, and 

 in winter there will be a better chance than 

 at any other time for the wind to do the 

 seeds a favor, especially when there is snow 

 on the ground, for then they will bound 

 along before the breeze till something inter- 

 rupts them. BEAL Seed Dispersal, ch. 4, p. 

 22. (G. & Co., 1898.) 



2380. NATURE'S CARVING Rocks 

 Cut and Polished by Glacier. This Grimsel 

 is a weird region a monument carved with 

 hieroglyphics more ancient and more grand 

 than those of Nineveh or the Nile. It is a 

 world disinterred by the sun from a sepul- 

 cher of ice. All around are evidences of the 

 existence and the might of the glaciers 

 which once held possession of the place. All 

 around the rocks are carved, and fluted, and 

 polished, and scored. Here and there angu- 

 lar pieces of quartz, held fast by the ice, 

 inserted their edges into the rocks and 

 scratched them like diamonds, the scratches 

 varying in depth and width according to the 

 magnitude of the cutting stone. Larger 

 masses, held similarly captive, scooped lon- 

 gitudinal depressions in the rocks over 

 which they passed, while in many cases the 

 polishing must have been effected by the ice 

 itself. A raindrop will wear a stone away; 

 much more would an ice surface, squeezed 

 into perfect contact by enormous pressure, 

 rub away the asperities of the rocks over 

 which for ages it was forced to slide. The 

 rocks thus polished by the ice itself are so 

 exceedingly smooth and slippery that it ^ is 

 impossible to stand on them where their in- 

 clination is at all considerable. TYNDALL 

 Hours of Exercise in the Alps, ch. 7, p. 75. 

 (A., 1808.) 



